Denver's First Women's Sports Bar Is Now Open on Colfax

The city has a lot of bars we love — and plenty of sports bars to choose from when you want to catch a game. But the latest addition offers something new.

Inside the 99ers Sports Bar, wall art depicts the moment that Brandi Chastain tore off her jersey in joy after sinking a penalty kick to boost the United States over China to win the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup.

The bar, named after the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT) that took home the trophy, hopes to capture that blissful feeling for women’s sports fans in the city as Denver’s first and only women’s sports bar.

Miranda Spencer and Annie Weaver, the bar’s owners, grew up watching and loving women’s sports, but there weren’t many places to watch women’s sporting events beyond actually going to the stadium. Although they love witnessing athletic accomplishments by women, seeing women play sports is about more than just the game for Spencer and Weaver.

“Being able to see somebody that's like us on television screens is huge,” Spencer says. “I'm happy we have it now, but I wish we would have had it as children, as well.”

Some of Spencer’s favorite athletes are Sue Bird, Simone Biles and Megan Rapinoe, all of whom Spencer says became her favorites not just because of their athletic prowess, but by being at the forefront of important conversations about pay equity, gender presentation and mental health.
While Weaver jokes that all women athletes are her favorites, Billie Jean King’s story has always resonated with her, and she remembers dressing up as Mia Hamm for Halloween five years in a row growing up. Creating a space to honor and share those loves with the community is the goal at the 99ers, which opened on December 7 after finally getting liquor license approval from the city the day before.

Although Spencer and Weaver met just a year and a half ago, it’s been a long journey to get to opening day.

Weaver was an educator for many years and now works in risk analysis, while Spencer has a background in sales and helps run her family business. The bar has been their passion project almost since the day they met in the spring of 2023, when Spencer recruited Weaver to play on her flag football team.

Soon after meeting, the pair embarked on a road trip with some teammates to Texas to play in a tournament. On that drive, the idea for the 99ers was born.

“We had barely met, and we just connected,” Weaver says. “You just know when you meet somebody who's going to be a lifelong friend.”

Weaver had been to the Sports Bra, an extremely successful women’s sports bar in Portland, and fell in love with the idea of opening a similar concept, but she knew she needed a business partner. In Spencer, she felt like she’d found that person, pitching the idea from the back seat of the minivan while Spencer drove.

After returning from Texas, they wrote a business plan and hit the ground running. Quickly, the partners realized that they needed a real estate agent to help them find the right space and negotiate terminology and specifics they were unfamiliar with.

It took six or seven months to find the space at 909 East Colfax Avenue. Neither Weaver nor Spencer owns a home, nor had they owned a business before, so they had trouble showing landlords that their finances were solid. Plus, they kept meeting with brokers instead of owners, feeling like they hadn’t really gotten a chance to sell their concept.
But at the 909 Colfax spot, the owner met with them directly, and they knew they’d found the right place.

“Both of us walked out the door and were like, that’s the first time we’ve been in charge, which felt really good,” Spencer recalls. “It's a great location. It's right where a lot of things happen. It worked out the way it was supposed to. It just took a long time to get there.”

Once they had the space, it took more time to get the place ready. The barbershop next door, which is still operating, had decided to downsize, so the 99ers had to transform a barbershop setup into a bar. Additionally, the building had drop ceilings, lowering the height of the walls from fourteen feet to just nine or ten feet, and Weaver and Spencer realized they needed professional help once they began demolition to restore the ceiling to its full height.

The pair hired local architecture firm F9 Productions to help. Lance Cayko, F9 co-founder, says the firm was able to help navigate the city building permit process as well as the challenge of making the small space feel as big as possible to make Weaver and Spencer’s vision a reality.

“I was extremely thrilled to just be a part of their vision and grateful to be hired by them,” Cayko says, adding that he's proud to work with the women, whom he sees as trailblazers.

In the end, Weaver and Spencer basically gutted the space, which they hadn’t planned to do, but it ended up being needed. Finally being able to open on December 7 was a relief.

The 99ers publishes weekly TV schedules on its Instagram that include occasional NFL or Denver sports games in addition to tons of women’s games at the NCAA and professional levels. To show women's sports, the bar has a DirecTV package with sports add-ons and some streaming service subscriptions to fill in the gaps. Weaver says 2024 has shown leaps for women’s sports being on TV, and the bar’s owners are hoping Sue Bird and Whoopi Goldberg’s separate ventures to create women’s sports channels succeed, to provide even more access.

The 99ers doesn’t serve food, but guests are welcome to bring their own. The bar is partnered with Pita Grill, its next-door neighbor, which has pledged free delivery and a discount for patrons who are at the 99ers.

At just around 1,000 square feet, the bar has eight televisions upstairs plus one in the basement, where there’s a pool table available for use and a mural by local artist Lindsay Martin.

The owners expect some ebbs and flows in business but predict March Madness will be incredibly busy. From there, college softball, the WNBA and the NWSL all start. They expect basketball to be the most popular right now thanks to the exposure Caitlin Clark’s megastardom brought to the sport in 2024, but also because of the 2025 projected draft class, which includes UConn’s Paige Bueckers.

Plus, the bar plans to show emerging professional sports leagues for women such as the Professional Women’s Hockey League, the Premier Lacrosse League and a pro women’s baseball league planned for 2026. In January 2025, Unrivaled — a 3v3 basketball league founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier — will kick off.

“I'm interested to see how it does,” Weaver says. “It's a different format, but they were able to pull some big basketball stars.”

Those stars include Angel Reese, Arike Ogunbowale, Brittney Griner, Aliyah Boston and many more. Weaver and Spencer argue that women’s sports are more exciting than men’s versions because women tend to employ more strategy and play a purer form of the game, particularly in basketball.

“A man was in here the other day and was like, ‘I just love watching women's basketball so much more than I love watching men's basketball because they actually play, whereas men just want to shoot a three and not play defense,’” Weaver recalls.

The owners promise plenty of variety and have already shown many sports requested by patrons, including pickleball. During slow hours, women's sports documentaries will also play.
The bar is positioned in the Lavender Hill Cultural District, meant to honor and uplift the city’s queer community. Although the 99ers isn’t by definition a queer bar — the owners point out that everyone watches women’s sports — it's making an effort to contribute to the inclusivity of its stretch of Colfax.

“We know that a big percentage of our customers are going to be queer people because this is the Lavender Hill area, but also we want anybody and everybody to feel like they can come in and enjoy in a safe space,” Weaver says.

Even those who don't want to lock in on sports are welcome, Spencer adds.

The menu includes two house beers: a 99ers brew from Goldspot Brewing Company, and weB4me, a brew made in partnership with Lady Justice Brewing and named after the 1999 USWNT motto. Spencer and Weaver met some members of the 1999 squad, who helped them name the beer. “They were very much about about uplifting women as a whole rather than just the individuals, and that's part of our name, too,” Weaver says. “That's what we're about. We want community. We want to uplift everybody as a whole.”

Right now there are drafts and cans available, but the bar has a full liquor license, so the owners plan to add basic liquor drinks and shots soon, noting that they already had people heading to the Ogden Theatre pop in and ask for shots on the way to a show.

The team has plans for an outdoor patio space in the back and even more 99ers merch, which is already selling well.

The 99ers Sports Bar is located at 909 East Colfax Avenue and is open from 2 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit the99erssportsbar.com.